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    Infant neural sensitivity to eye gaze depends on early experience of gaze communication

    Vernetti, Angelina and Ganea, Natasa and Tucker, Leslie and Charman, T. and Johnson, Mark H. and Senju, Atsushi (2018) Infant neural sensitivity to eye gaze depends on early experience of gaze communication. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 34 , pp. 1-6. ISSN 1878-9293.

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    Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2018.05.007

    Abstract

    A fundamental question in functional brain development is how the brain acquires specialised processing optimised for its individual environment. The current study is the first to demonstrate that distinct experience of eye gaze communication, due to the visual impairment of a parent, affects the specificity of brain responses to dynamic gaze shifts in infants. Event-related potentials (ERPs) from 6-10 months old sighted infants with blind parents (SIBP group) and control infants with sighted parents (CTRL group) were recorded while they observed a face with gaze shifting Toward or Away from them. Unlike the CTRL group, ERPs of the SIBP group did not differentiate between the two directions of gaze shift. Thus, selective brain responses to perceived gaze shifts in infants may depend on their eye gaze communication experience with the primary caregiver. This finding highlights the critical role of early communicative experience in the emerging functional specialisation of the human brain.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): eye gaze, event-related potential, infant study, social experience, non-verbal communication
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 29 May 2018 10:22
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:42
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/22577

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